PW noted that he picked up a Hittite decanter on his trip and that started me thinking again...i do so little thinking nowadays that I remember when I think......I think..

Anyone here into collecting wine antiquities (not the Jefferson Bottles....)? I started not so long ago when an antique dealer I know in Boston that we buy pieces from started to talk to me about his love for Pinot Noir. He started collecting some very serious pieces (Five figures) and started to show them to me. of course if I can't drink Lafite, I won't buy five figure antiques but I did start picking up lesser pieces.

I have a 2000 yr old wine drinking vessel (the ear cup) called a yushang made ofo ceramic (http://history.cultural-china.com/en/53H2040H5107.html). This shape essentially stayed unchanged for 2000 years. Wonder if Riedel will reproduced one of these in Hand blown cristal... I have several ceramic wine vessels from the Shang dynasty 650 AD. Some drawings showing wine consumption,. etc,..

I'm not likely to decant my next bottle into this but have continued to look into these artifacts as an interest. People WAYYYYY back were interested in wine and they have specifically shaped vessels to hold and consume them. Thought provoking.

TW and WW, as a kid I grew up in Tunisia. On weekends, there was no TV, cartoons, games. So my father woke me up, and we went digging in and around Carthage. We amassed a large Roman, Byzantine and Phoenician pottery collection. A lot of it was given away to museums and such, but we still have a few wine jugs, and one large amphorae covered in barnacles. Good stuff, have yet to really drink anything out of them as they were high in lead content, thus the high mortality rate. Your piece sounds amazing. Take a picture of it and loaded it up on the Wines.com Facebook page. Maybe we can convice WW to start up a facebook page and get with the program :-)

Most of us are not quite so luck as Andy here with his art and wine tastes and capabilities. my only hope is that he will transfer his enthusiam and knowledge to the next generation now that he has embarked along that route as well!! I agree with you. He is one lucky man!

Wine education is huge for me. Thats the #1 reason why this site is going thru an overhaul, which was much more than I originally bargained for, but continue to pursue. The wikipedia is an area which we all can update and edit based on our knowledge. You don't have to be an administrator, but should use factual knowledge vs. opinions for those pages. We are adding lots of videos and pronunciation guides to the wikipedia with direct links from the Wine Board. The Wine Board will have "above the fold" presence in the next release which is scheduled for late August.